The Princess Bride

This is a romantic story about true love, fights and insidiousness, magic and wonder, staged in a ruritanian fantasy country somewhere in Europe.

I've read this book quite late in my live (and have not seen the film until now), so maybe some of the magic got lost in my immortal cynicism (this was written after I took the red pill).

Buttercup, a beauty living on a farm, finds her True Love in Winsley, the farm boy, who plans to go to America to succeed before he wants to come back - for her. And then Winsley is said to be killed by the dreaded Pirate Roberts. Buttercup - thinking that her loved is killed - surrenders to the courting of Prince Humperdinck. Before the marriage she gets kidnapped by Spanish fencing master Inigo Montoya, Fezzik the gigantic wrestler from Turkey and the smart Sicilian criminal Vezzini. But they get overwhelmed one by one by a mysterious man in black (this was before the science fiction comedy film of that name).

It is beyond question a damn prototype of a Damsel in Distress Book (this was before emancipation glanced Hollywood or after a bitter divorce). Buttercup is mostly subject, not object to kidnapping, murder and fights. Of course she is beautiful, devout and loving. One gets to like Inigo Montoya and Fezzik. The light told naive story lives from its exaggerations, its interspersed brackets with funny comments and of course of the frame narrative. The author tells us that the story was written by someone else and he only did the abridgment, since his father read "only the good parts" to him as child. He rants about his wife, makes fun of film making and book writing.

To my (later) edition there is also an attachment "Buttercups Baby" which is superfluous, it might have been the try to do start a second book which was not finished or whatever.

Key Sentence: "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya; you killed my father; prepare to die!"

My rating: Four of five stars (this is because of dormant damsel in distress and superfluous chapters (with a strong female lead and more discipline in ending the book I'd say six stars of five (which would be beyond logic ) ) ) ( yes, I do count my brackets, I've learned LISP in early days).

(Review written 2015-04, shortly after reading the book. Haven't read it again)

For the purpose of this piece of writing, a fake-out is when an author tricks the reader into thinking an action, or an event, took place, only to reveal, after it is over, that it was imaginary—took place in a character's imagination.



The following is more of a spotlight on a specific aspect of the novel than a full review.

I was impressed by how Goldman dug his own grave with all the fake-outs then, cleverly, climbed his way out.

The fake-outs were an effective strategy to give the reader (1) a wider range of emotions to experience, without having to stray into longer side stories, and (2) a reason to second guess everything they read; however, by relying on a fake-out more than once, Goldman created a monster that threatens to weaken the emotional impact of any big event—e.g. the death of the protagonist.

If the reader gets conditioned to the use of fake-outs, they are less likely to take such a shocking event seriously because (1) they want the hero to prevail, (2) they expect the hero to prevail, and (3) they are reluctant to commit a genuine emotion to an event that could turn out to be fake.

Although he plans to resuscitate him later, Goldman is still interested in cranking up the emotional impact of the hero's death to the highest level possible. How does he achieve that? The answer is simple, yet brilliant, I find.

Before getting to the answer, there are three points that you need to keep in mind: (1) there are two stories being told simultaneously: The Princess Bride—the story written by Morgenstern; I will call this story A—and the story of Billy's father reading The Princess Bride to Billy—I will call this story B—, (2) all the fake-outs happen in story A, and (3) Billy's father read the book before; thus, he is the only source, other than the book itself, that we can trust to tell us what happens next.

Now, here is how Goldman climbed out of the grave he dug: (1) he took the death out of story A—where all the fake-outs, up to this point, took place—and moved it to story B—where not a single fake-out had happened before—, and (2) he used the father's knowledge of what happens next in the book to confirm the death is not fake.

Voila: now, you and I have a convincing death that is more likely to fool us, and Goldman gets the emotional gut-punch he is after.

Of course, by the tone of the book alone, you can tell there is no way it is not going to have a happy ending, and Goldman knew that, but there is a limit to everything. All an author can do is get as close as possible to that limit, which, I think, is what Goldman was able to achieve here.